


The World and All Its Wonders

by Fabrisse



Category: Bletchley Circle
Genre: Gen, Misses Clause Challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-16
Updated: 2013-12-16
Packaged: 2018-01-04 21:29:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1085892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fabrisse/pseuds/Fabrisse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Millie left on her adventures early in 1946.  Here's some of her path.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The World and All Its Wonders

**Author's Note:**

  * For [osmia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/osmia/gifts).



She'd walked out with one suitcase and the clothes on her back. The war was over. No one needed their skills anymore. 

One of her regular young men had asked her to marry him: to come back to his village in Yorkshire and be a schoolteacher's wife. She'd thought it over for nearly a full minute. Then Millie had taken his hand and said, "Roger, you're very, very sweet, but I can't imagine sharing that life with you." He'd turned on his heel and left. Three days later, before the ink had dried on Japan's surrender, she had received her papers releasing her from duty.

She cashed every bond she had and emptied out her bank account. She sold off old jewelry, the pretty things she loved because, finally, she was going to see the world. Other pretty things would come to her -- and maybe some ugly things, too -- but they would be new and different and part of a great big world.

Susan was supposed to come, but she'd begged off, said she wasn't ready, suggested that they wait a year or two and build up their bank accounts. All sensible things, but after seven years of war, and nearly a year of working, Susan was no closer to packing her bag and coming along, so Millie walked out. She took the tube to Waterloo Station and asked for a ticket to Dover.

***  
She'd planned to start in Paris, but the first ferry had been to Oostende, so she ended up in Brussels instead. The Belgians hadn't fought as much this time; most of the damage had been done by the Allies after the King surrendered to the Germans. Brussels was still there and the food! After years of horribly tight rations, the food was glorious. She saw a few places where there was rebuilding going on, and she spoke to the people as best she could. She daren't use her excellent German, so she floundered in Dutch or spoke English-accented schoolgirl French. 

Her first postcard was sent the day she left Brussels. She hadn't made up her mind where she was going until then. She'd thought of Germany, to see more of what her side had done, but, truly she couldn't bear it. There was a sense of responsibility for helping to bomb their homes, but there was also a huge urge to revel in a defeated enemy. Millie couldn't stand being so torn, so she got a third class local train to Paris instead. The postcard told Susan she would be in Paris a week and could be reached at the _poste restante_ at the _Gare du Nord._

Each time she decided where to go next, she wrote to Susan and left a post office or place to pick up her mail in the new city. She spent a month in a small town in Italy, recuperating in the spring sunlight and husbanding her resources by working under the table doing translations for locals writing to relatives elsewhere in the world, people trying to find a better place.

She only spent a little time in Rome, but another two months were spent in Naples while she built up her bank a little, working as a temporary secretary to an American author; he later became known for the masculine frankness of his prose style which Millie always found amusing. The author paid for a small room at the same hotel where he was staying as well as buying her lunch and paying her wages. The city was dangerous, and Millie learned a great deal about how to hide her financial assets as well as her physical ones.

The author headed back to someplace called Baton Rouge, which Millie thought couldn't be right, after introducing her to another American writer, a woman who wrote romantic trifles, who was heading to Egypt. In return for her secretarial services on the boat, the writer would pay for a third class shared cabin space to Alexandria. If she was satisfied with Millie's work, then she would be kept on for three months as the writer traveled through North Africa.

Millie jumped at the offer and sent Susan a long letter with a full itinerary, including the names of the hotels she'd be staying at. She begged her friend to come and find out the adventures. Millie didn't hide that some had not been happy ones. She'd been robbed one evening in Naples, fortunately she wasn't carrying much money on her, but she didn't hide it from Susan. Millie had purchased a gun soon afterwards and learned to fire it.

She boarded the small boat crossing the Mediterranean with joy. She had work; she had time to explore. And Susan would come to Cairo.

After a month, it was Susan would meet her in Algiers. Millie knew Susan adored the movie _Algiers_. The girls in their hut teased her about her crush on Charles Boyer, to which Susan had said, "He seems more like a grown-up than all those American actors." Millie had laughed in delight. Leave it to Susan to want a grown-up man instead of a pretty fancy boy. 

They headed to Rabat after Algiers, and that was the end of that job. There wasn't a day of it that Millie would have traded for all the world. The letters and typing up notes and taking dictation were all tedious, but she did the work quickly and accurately. In return, the writer included her on tours of the pyramids. She'd seen Karnack under a desert moon, and trembled at the vastness of Abu Simbel. She'd gone through the Kasbah in Tunis, as well as the one in Algiers, and could say she'd seen Tripoli and the souks of Marrakesh. There was beauty in walking the sands under other moons, a different sun. Millie only wished she had a friend to share it with.

She remembered Sarah Pritchard who'd worked in hut 8 and came from Kenya, and took a flier in writing her. The invitation to come stay in Nairobi for a month was prompt, and Pritch included an introduction to a friend of hers who flew planes. Millie's first ever flight was a hopper from Marrakesh to Nairobi, stopping for fuel and to exchange goods from one small town to another along the route.

The last postcard was sent from Marrakesh. She told Susan her address with Pritch in Kenya and the approximate dates she'd be there. Millie ended it with a simple, "Please come," before signing her name.

***  
Kenya was the last happy adventure. She'd done some minor secretarial work at one of the Colonial offices in order to build up her funds again. She saved for passage to Kerala and arrived just as Partition was announced. The entire subcontinent was in upheaval, and Millie had left quickly on the advice of one of the few kind memsahibs she met there. By the time she got to Singapore, her money was nearly gone. She ordered a drink at the Long Bar at the Raffles, and one of the men had taken her for a prostitute. She thought about her bank balance, thought about her adventures and said, "No," but the moment of weakness hit her with full force.

The following morning she approached one of the British Colonial offices. She wasn't the first person to end up broke in Singapore. She wouldn't be the last. They found Millie some respectable work with a couple of local foreign correspondents while they found third class passage back to Blighty for her. The money she had in her hand when she got on the boat would cover any extras she might need on the journey. The S.S. Ranchi left Singapore for Canberra before sailing for Southampton and refitting. On the voyage to Australia, Millie smiled when one of the sailors pointed out the Southern Cross. Beneath the equator, even the skies were a new adventure.

***  
Millie had been back in England for six years. Secretarial work was hard to come by, much less anything that really let her use her intellect. She ended up waiting tables at small cafes. Sometimes she dreamt of becoming a writer. But her best stories were classified or far too personal to share with readers. She felt poised on a knife edge sometimes. She knew she'd lived, but sometimes she wondered if she was still alive in this dull, grey world where even contentment was rationed.

The knock came just as she was getting ready for her shift. She opened the door, and, even though her friend hadn't changed much physically, the defeated look in her eyes fooled Millie for a moment. When she finally recognized Susan, she said, "Bloody hell!"


End file.
